I just had to blog this here. I am about to go into 2 days of analyst briefings here in Lisbon. The event covers everything IBM does with lots of speakers, lots of analysts. The poster is up everywhere in the hotel. Now the venue is great, but this poster gave made me let out a little cheer.

The picture 2nd from the right is the cropped version of our CEO SJP meeting Irving (IWB) back in November in China last year in Second Life. The really cool thing is that right at the back in the shot there is my suited avatar that I used for the occasion and standing in front of my is Algernon (Roo). Its like a little Alternate Reality Game clue, a little white rabbit that I can pull out in the presentations and discussions. I was there and this really did happen.
This is the venue

Also rather ironically in a joined up everything is linked type way the garden has a chinese pagoda, not a full forbidden city look but I could stand there and think back to the virtual event that made a whole lot of difference to things.

Feel free to take a copy and paste in your own avatars.
The real and the virtual intertwined even more than ever, and thats with the wetware API that we provide as humans fuelling the linkages, wait till the code starts throwing more real to virtual messaging around.

Whilst we gather our thoughts and the various bloggers and twitterers catch their breath I thought I would post this completely amateur camera walk about featuring the venue of the VWFE 07. You can play spot the metarati. I was not going for anything in particular and I only had a few moments to walk around, as the rest of the time was talking with people, lots of press and customers as well as the biz.
I do like the fact I have Roo and Cory Doctorow in first, Roo also featured in the programme on the same page as Lord Putnam.

I will say that it was a good event, I certainly noticed a difference in the range and depth of questions, the understanding of where we are all going. I know Richard Bartle finished the sessions warning of us not forgetting the reason we have virtual worlds, not to remove the spirit from them, but I think that many of us agree and are not going to let that happen.
In fact in answer to those comments it si worth looking at this Global Innovation Outlook 3.0 where Irving says “In virtual worlds, it’s less about consumerism, and more about expressionism.”

Now that the jet lag of San Jose is passing it is time to tell you all about the next conference coming up next week. The VW Forum Europe 2007 is taking place in London Tuesday 23rd-Friday 26th

IBM is a founding sponsor along with Rivers Run Red and There.com
Yes we will be there a whole bunch of the original UK eightbar crew.
On Tuesday 23rd Roo will be presenting at the optional pre-event on building communities in enterprise scale virtual environments. The story of eightbar.
On Thursday 24th I will be on a panel

Panel: Harnessing the power of virtual worlds for corporate collaboration

* Virtual offices
* Management of distributed teams
* New development models
* Fast prototyping
* R&D

Greg Nuyens, CEO, Qwaq
Steve Prentice, Group Vice President and Chief of Research, Gartner
Ian Hughes , Metaverse Evangelist, IBM

Moderator: Mike Butcher, Editor, TechCrunch UK

We will of course have an IBM booth that anyone can come along and meet us and talk about all of this. With some of the wider team coming over from the US too.

Paul Ledak will be over for the event and givin a Keynote on Thursday too
Keynote: Cross-world, cross-platform; how close are we to a multi-world integrated framework?

* Do virtual worlds drive real business value?
* What is the requirement for a new set of standards?
* What is the impact of the increasing number of worlds?
* What business requirements are emerging?

Paul Ledak , VP, Development, IBM Research

The full conference programme is here

There are a lot of good sessions and a glittering body of metarati with lots to say and share on the subject. As much as I like California, this is our home turf and only 60 miles from Hursley where we are proud to say out involvment in all this started back in April 2006. The time has flown, there is still much to do but gatherings like this is where the magic happens.

***Update For a really in depth post and some great pictures (something lacking here for some reason) check out Tish’s post over on Ugotrade

As I am sitting waiting for my flight back to the UK, and as I have a few minutes of battery life left I thought it worth putting down a few thoughts on what went on at VW2007.
The biggest and most awe inspiring part had to be the kick off. The announcement by the creator of CSI that he and the Electric Sheep were partnering on an immensly large project taking the $6billion dollar franchise of CSI into Second Life. Regardless of whether you watch CSI or not this is a media innovator joining forces with a virtual worlds innovator. It is at these sorts of intersections good things happen. Also, it is really extending the narrative of the programme, not, as we see with game and film ties ins a seperate property that usually does not work.
The story will blend into SL, out of SL, with RL and with fictional characters. Visitors will have several levels of engagement from simple related puzzles ot a deeper investigative path in the story. It is by its very nature temporal, to fit in between important TV episodes. It is blending with the world of Alternate Reality Games and mainstream very popular television too.
This is another one of those events that will put virtual worlds into peoples lives, even if they do not dive in, they will notice, and far more than a traditional advert.
There was a slight concern I had over the potential other product placement, but as with product placement in games, when in context it works.
The other great thing about this conference was the size, it was significantly bigger in both Expo terms and tracks of dicussions than the previous one.
The IBM booth, which was a stand and 2 offices that were rezzed on the floor was a very well trafficked place. The entire team spent the entire time talking to people. Our partners at Icarus had an even more impressive set up, with a 2 story stand and a live motion capture streaming into a virtual world demonstration. This was amusing just for the fact that the girls demoing it were wearing the mocap ping pong ball suits for the cameras to triangulate their position, but the avatars looked perfectly normal. Sort of the wrong way round form what we normally experience.
All the major players were there, with the exception of Linden Labs and Rivers Run Red. Linden really did not need to have a stand as lots of people were doing their PR for them 😉
Our stand we had both SL, Active Worlds and the IQ Metaverse (the torque based one). We also have Jacques from the SMB media and entertainment and the guys from Vivox there. There was another part to the stand over with Icarus and that was where Peter Finn set up shop with his alpha demo of blending virtual worlds with a browser. That needs a whole post in its own right of course.
I had a good chat with most of the stands, though it is amazaing how little time you end up having when you are talking to press, analysts and bumping into the metarati that you know from in world and on Twitter.
The pitch I did with John from CMP went veyr well. We split it into 2 slots one after the other and I threw in my 9.4 years wasted each week by us waiting on telecons starting figure, which has made a few press write ups.
The majority of the session was Q&A. We both gave in depth answers. In particular I was explaining the story of eightbar, and how letting go means good things can happen and that my fellow IBMers and our extended set of contacts and friends now in this new industry could not have happened any other way.
We had lots of conversations around the various consortium meetings and press releases (as Roo blogged about previously).
Millions of US did a good announcement with a veyr nice machinima taking the Scion City a bit further, and notably also into a more ARG type of territory.
Christian from Cisco also did a good pitch where he name checked a whole lot of people (including our very own Roo Reynolds). The theme was that this is all getting big, but its still very small. That sounds a bit negative but the small was in terms of earth population. So the basis was that we need to all work together to grow. Which is great as thats been my position on this since day one 🙂
One of the most striking things I am taking away is some words that our very own Sandy Kearney used. In here leading into the business track presentation to kick us all off she referred to the fact we had moved from the information age to the conceptual age. Just as we had problems adjusting from industrial to information ages where the nut and bolt did not map to the bits and bytes, the conceptual age requires a different mentality and approach. I feel that I understand that, it is en extension of the Web 2.0 mentality yet much more once you dwell on it.
It was also interesting to talk to Jerry and Mark and Christian about Wello Horld, their new startup. They have a great logo with a turtle and the workd as its shell. Other than that they were very tight lipped, or non-committal (and with good reason I suspect) on what they are doing. It was a bit of a viral discussion as we all pieced together the various jobs on linkedin, the fact Mark Wallace had a suit on and snippets of conversation. Either way, gossip is good and I wish them luck.
Finally I was impressed by what the scenecaster guys have been up to, again that needs to be a seperate post. Its not MMO, but it is 3d and user generated with the potential to build on others work too. Spin had been raving about it so thats always a good sign. You can check him signing out of the conference in my little youtube post over on epredator.com
So, great conference, great people and more importantly still great and growing potential.
Rather like a good sport though we get to do this all again in 1.5 weeks in London at VWF Europe. More on that later too… I have a plane to catch.

We have blogged several times about our internal metaverse (or one of them) and how we are looking at what we can do with the Garage Games Torque Engine. Our internal team has grown a bit recently and we have some interesing things we want to deliver. Sometimes it can be a little tricky to find the right examples of how things work so it was really nice when I bumped into this very nice creation, Blockland.
Blockland is written in Torque and has a community growing around it and its modability. It uses a slightly different metaphor for creation in that it uses established blocks from known sets that can be bolted together by a visitor to a server. The server itself can be a run anywhere. So this is not the sort of grid we are used to but the Torque/games model. However usually on a Torque server it is quite tricky to let others create content as the content creation pipeline is based around an Admin building a map and deploying it. We had been doing some experiments with some scripting that allowed objects to be moved around in the space to allow for some user interaction and emergent behaviour. Of course our metaverse is more about interacting with internal corporate systems and information so much of the work has gone into that.
Anyway the developer(s) of Blockland have created the ability to form collections of these blocks, colour them, stack them, and save them. People gather together on multiplayer servers both to game, but also to build. I think its a smallish community, but it looks really interesting.
Of course there is a certain similarity to a certain platsic block real life creation set, and they are doing their own virtual world down the line.
For now I am intrigued to learn how some of the problems and challenges we are solving have been solved by Blockland.
There is a free demo version, and the full version is a whole $20, so yes epredator is a fully signed up member of Blockland now.

There are avatar customization features under the player section.

When building you select bricks from a palette and spray paint them different colours.
Whilst Torque has a mission creation editor, which you can patch back in, this is designed to do the maps before you start the server. Here these are in world live running modifications. I am not quite sure of the persistence model, I know I can save bricks and load bricks like Rezzing in Second Life.

Check out the website and youtube for a stack of videos.

Roo wrote a post with a nice video here of AM Radio’s delightful piece of art creation. The Cornfield, 1920’s style with a fantastic textured train and some incredible prebaking of textures.
We had seen this buidl happen on our internal blogs, and it was good to see it go public. Now AM Radio has decided to raise some funds for the charity heifer.org but selling copies of his work that you can go and view here.
Its a subtle yet amazingly detailed set of objects and well worth a look. I will post some stills when they get through the system, but I needed to post this update for all you art appreciating and charity minded individuals out there.
*update here are some of the snapzilla’s from the build

The next big virtual worlds conference is looming large. Virtual Worlds Fall in San Jose on 11/12 October.
IBM is a gold sponsor and there will be a lot of the extended eightbar team at the conference.
Sandy Kearney has a keynote:
Virtual Worlds: The BEST platforms for Enterprise Value
An Examination of Virtual World Platforms From the Enterprise Perspective.
The number of virtual worlds platforms are proliferating from publicly operated virtual worlds to private world engines. Where does an enterprise start when evaluating a platform based on BEST: Business, Economic Value, Social Interaction and Technology? This detailed session will review the leading platforms for enterprise use, talk about the real business value being realized in virtual worlds today and have a look into the future of virtual worlds fit for business.
– Sandy Kearney, IBM Global Director, IBM 3D Internet and Virtual Business

Linda Ban is moderating a panel
Applications that Work
What applications work for large scale enterprises. This panel discussion will look at multiple applications, using actual use-cases as examples. What are the goals and objectives? Who are the participants: customers, partners or internal to the organization? It is channel communication or executive briefings to the public or manager training or is it employee collaboration. what applications work and under what circumstances?
– Greg Nuyens, CEO, Qwaq
– Ron Burns, President, ProtonMedia
– Robert Gehorsam, President, Forterra Systems
– Steve Metzger, CEO, VT&T
– Linda Ban, Client and Program Strategy Executive, 3DInternet and Digital Convergence,
IBM Research

and yours truly is speaking on business process management in the enterprise with John Jainschigg, Director, Online Technology and New Business, CMP Technology.

October 10th
Wednesday, 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Business Process Management
How do you manage a virtual worlds presence for a large organization. What processes need to be put in place for a public virtual worlds effort such as Second Life vs a private dedicated virtual world? What variables need to be considered depending on the applications and goals expected?
– Ian Hughes, Metaverse Evangelist, IBM
– John Jainschigg, Director, Online Technology and New Business, CMP Technology, LLC

Our pitch is scheduled at the same time as Reuben, Sibley and Wello’s session

Entertainment in Virtual Worlds – It’s Not Games. it’s Not TV. It’s….
With the advent of virtual worlds television networks, individual channels and individual shows can now create interactive versions of their franchises and engage fans directly, immersing them into the environment. Find out how to successfully extend a television brand, including measuring audience participation and extending the advertising business model. Speakers will discuss activities on multiple virtual worlds platforms.
– Blake Lewin, Vice President Product Development, Turner Broadcasting Inc.
– Daniel Schiappa, General Manager, Strategy Entertainment and Devices Division,
Microsoft Corporation
– Reuben Steiger, CEO, Millions of Us
– Sibley Verbeck, CEO, The Electric Sheep Company
– Jerry Paffendorf, CEO, Wello Horld (moderator)

Of course I will be there all the time and around in sessions and at the IBM stand with many of the others who will be attending, so there is a whole crowd to come and meet. Peter Rodriguez who runs our CIO metaverse project (amongst other things) will be there, so if you would like to meet the person who officially took Roo and I on as metaverse evangelists within IBM last September, then I can introduce you.

It will be interesting to see the scale and focus now we have reached this stage an an industry. It also shows that real life is a great place to meet people. I am sure there will be many huddles and conversations about projects, ideas and the future. The backchannel at these things is obviously as important as the presentations.

So look out for me and or my striped leather jacket and come and say hi, or find and IBMer and ask for epredator 🙂 Remember though its not just me that knows about this stuff now.
See you there, or just follow some people one twitter